Constantly monitoring the cities of the world. The emotional state of the metropolice.

A artwork about the aesthetics of surveillance.

Selected webcam feeds are collected (hacked) from cities and sources around the world in real time. These real time images are fed into a software system where a series of specialised channels rework and re mash these images.

The channels are always on, and always changing, a constant view of world cities changing and evolving around the clock. Uses specially created software and technology to randomly travel the globe and integrate the images from the cameras. The image are taken from live webcams around the worldwide randomly in real time and will evolve forever (or until the cameras break).This is never the same again always different....forever. The channels are always on, and always changing, a constant view of the world changing and evolving around the clock.

Works inside include the titles; tormented, bleeding, earthquakes, divided,

BACKGOUND INFO: TEXT BY STANZA.

The city also has millions of CCTV. In essence the city is the biggest TV station in existence. Millions of hours worth of data are recorded every day by these cameras on city TV. One can take the sounds and images off live web streams and re-represent them thus creating new interpretations of the city in the process. The increase of technology infrastructure in the daily existence of a city means that technology will, more than ever be everywhere in our environment. Mobile data mining will be part of the fabric of the landscape. We will be carrying this data in pods, phones and IDS cards. Everything is or will be tracked. CCTV, car sensors, tracking inside our phones and id card movement tracking in the guise of anti- terror activity. The patterns we make, the forces we weave, are all being networked into retrievable data structures that can be re-imagined and sourced for information. These patterns all disclose new ways of seeing the world. The value of information will be a new currency as power change. The central issue that will develop will be the privilege and access to these data sources. By at least taking asome of this data and making something with it one is at least reclaiming ownership of the data and putting it back in the public domain.

CCITYY.

So let us imagine a space in which every action, memory, thought, feeling, has a connection to every other action. A space where all data in the system, seemlessly integrates with all others. This place exists, its inside our heads. The emergent metaphor of the brain has many similarities with the emergent connectivity of cities. The city experience is a web of connected networks and multi layered threaded paths that condition us to the emotional state of the city space. In essence, the city fabric is a giant multi user multi data sphere. To take part you really have to put something back in, that's like life. In this case, to take part you have to input data so others 'may' see the output of the data response. This scenario leads to identifiction of various type of mobility. Mobility can be seen from traffic patterns, to pedestrian patterns, to bird flocking patterns; to multi-threaded patterns along a time line. Patterns can be seen in the architecture, patterns in the buildings, patterns in the architectural fabric of the urban design network. And closer inside the micro patterns of the city, we have the life cycles of the atomised, the insects, the life of continuity all of which exist along a timeline of past present and future.

The city has a history. Stories relative to time and place, stories from the street. Love stories personal and extreme, crime stories, stories that are small or that can affect global parameters. Inside the mobile city there are future stories and future worlds to invent and discover. All of these spheres can be represented by media and therefore by data within the digital realm and becomes a data source so powerfull so interwoven that its scale can only be imagined as metaphor. The size and scope of such an archive, of such rich mediated data experience would support many projects. As such it can be interpreted as history via one sort of interface or as a game via another sort of interface. A possible objective is to 'mediate' data into conceptual artefacts. With this perpsective there are many unimagined threads of data and connections that describe our world that can be explored. within which we can create artistic interpretations.


CCTV systems are everywhere in the public domain. We are all actors, bit part actors, in a giant movie called life. Except we cannot watch, it is not on public display and the results are monitored, filtered and distributed without our permission. The city also has millions of CCTV. In essence the city is the biggest TV station in existence. Millions of hours worth of data are recorded every day by these cameras on city TV. One can take the sounds and images off live web streams and re-represent them thus creating new interpretations of the city in the process. Using data from cctv, you can bring the outside inside. Selected feeds are collected from around the world in real time. These real time images are fed into a software system where a series of specialised channels rework these images. The channels are always on, and always changing, a constant view of the world changing and evolving around the clock. This uses specially created software and technology to randomly engage the cameras.

The increase of technology infrastructure in the daily existence of a city means that technology will, more than ever be everywhere in our environment. Everything is or will be tracked. CCTV, car sensors, tracking inside our phones and id card movement tracking in the guise of anti- terror activity. The patterns we make, the forces we weave, are all being networked into retrievable data structures that can be re-imagined and sourced for information. These patterns all disclose new ways of seeing the world. The value of information will be a new currency as power change. The central issue that will develop will be the privilege and access to these data sources.

Two more works in the series.

GLOBAL -----------http://www.stanza.co.uk/global/index.htm
CCITYV II-------------http://www.stanza.co.uk/cctvII/index.html

Stanza's, 'Global: Never the same again always different....Forever', is a real time web artefact. A 3d web sculpture being tranformed in real time with live data from around the world. This is being updated from webcams around the globe in real time. 'Never the same again always different....Forever', uses CCTV and web cams which offer readily available sources of continous visual data from our environment and world cities. This work turns the notion of surveillance upside down, since in this work we are all watching everybody and opens up a question about the legality of the imagery. It also turns us all in voyeurs and creates a insight into the imagery and happenings that exist in variuos 'parallel realities'. The data is opened out to a global online network of observers. It becomes an online global repositoned world view unfolding in real time. If many computers all link to this work then this looks interesting as all the images on the screens will be different. Global is one of many works have made recently about real time data in networks and cities and about the ownership of these image rights. This work is available for installatons. It has been shown at Viper 2004 in Basel Switzerland, and at the Samsung media Centre in Korea as part of Senef. I have also shown this work in Japan, and The Watershed Media Centre Bristol.

ABOUT STANZA

Stanza is a UK based artist who specialises in net art, multimedia, and electronic music. His award winning online projects have been invited for exhibition in digital festivals around the world, and Stanza also travels extensively to present his net art, lecturing and giving performances of his audiovisual interactions. Stanza is interested in the engagement of the public/audience as a creative user across a variety of formats, from the web to cd-rom and gallery installation, and his extensive explorations gives him a high level of expertise in this field.

www.stanza.co.uk

stanza@sublime.net